Do You Know Why Victoria’s Secret Is Named ‘Victoria’s Secret’?

Yesterday, Cindy Crawford had a laugh when she reposted an old video from the archives of some Victoria’s Secret models being asked the age-old question, “Who is Victoria?”

Of course, most of the answers were jokes, but it does beg the question: Who really was the Victoria in the name—and what was her secret?

Ready for it? The brand was named after Queen Victoria, and referenced the taboo/hidden nature of lingerie and underwear at the time.

The company was started up by American business man Roy Raymond and his wife, Gaye, in 1977. According to reports, Raymond wanted to buy his wife some nice underwear, but couldn’t find any that weren’t dowdy, and he allegedly felt ‘unwelcome’ in the store.

"When I tried to buy lingerie for my wife," he told Newsweek at the time, "I was faced with racks of terry-cloth robes and ugly floral-print nylon nightgowns, and I always had the feeling the department store saleswomen thought I was an unwelcome intruder."

(Fun fact: if you’re a movie buff, you might remember this story from when nerdy-but-hot Justin Timberlake told it in The Social Network, as a warning to Jesse Eisenberg’s Mark Zuckerburg.)

After borrowing money from his in-laws and from a bank, he established Victoria’s Secret—which was named after the Queen because he imagined the stores looking like Victorian-era boudoirs, and wanted to evoke the sense of Victorian sophistication and propriety, while eluding to the ‘secret’ underneath the clothes.

After opening up his first store in Palo Alto, California, Raymond went onto open five more, and to launch a 42-page catalogue for the underwear. He then sold the business for $1 million to The Limited’s Leslie Wexner. Less than a decade later, the company was worth almost $1 billion.

Raymond tragically died by suicide after jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

Now, however, the brand is known as a lingerie giant, that has also branched into beauty, swimwear, womenswear and skincare.